This document is an prior version of the manuscript 'Refactoring Bacteriophage T7' that is now published in Nature/EMBO Molecular Systems Biology (DOI: 10.1038/msb4100025). This DSpace manuscript is more concise but provides less context than the MSB manuscript.

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dc.description.abstract

Natural biological systems are selected by evolution to continue to exist. Evolution might
give rise to complicated systems that are difficult to discover, measure, model, and direct.
Here, we redesign the genome of a natural biological system, bacteriophage T7, in order
to specify an engineered alternative that is easier to study, understand, and extend. We
replaced the left 11,515 base pairs of the wild-type genome with 12,179 base pairs of
redesigned DNA. The resulting chimeric genome encodes a viable bacteriophage that
maintains key features of the original while being simpler to model and easier to
manipulate.